Whether or not the South Park brand of satire had lost any steam in Season 20, the most recent run of episodes hit a (figurative) wall when the 2016 Election swung against the result they’d written for. Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have a few months to re-energize, but now hint they’ll skew less topical in Season 21, saying “what was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with.”

Speaking with the Australian Broadcast Corporation, Parker and Stone admitted their difficulty with Season 20 keeping topical, as the government was practically staging its own brand of satire-proof comedy. As Parker puts it, the pair were “really trying to make fun of what was going on, but we couldn’t keep up … we decided to just kind of back off, and let them do their comedy, and we’ll do ours.”

South Park won’t return to production for a few months yet, but Stone admits to some uncertainty with using topical material:

[Trump]’s certainly trying to do his bit. I don’t know! Like Trey said, we don’t have to do our South Parks for eight months. People say to us all the time, “Oh, you guys are getting all this good material!” Like we’re happy about some of the stuff that’s happening, but I don’t know if that’s true. It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like it’s going to be more difficult.

Granted, whatever plan for Season 20's end was thrown off-balance by Trump’s win, might Season 21 return to simpler storylines? Stay tuned for the latest.